slimmouse » Tue Apr 29, 2014 12:07 pm wrote:The last time/ vicinity a plane dissappeared like this was probably around the newly reinforced area of the Pentagon in September 2001.
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slimmouse » Tue Apr 29, 2014 12:07 pm wrote:The last time/ vicinity a plane dissappeared like this was probably around the newly reinforced area of the Pentagon in September 2001.
elfismiles » 29 Apr 2014 14:42 wrote:MH370 Search: Exploration firm claims wreckage found
by tan yi liang
Published: Tuesday April 29, 2014 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated: Tuesday April 29, 2014 MYT 12:15:59 PM http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2 ... age-found/
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304677904579535411034475506?mod=fox_australian&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304677904579535411034475506.html%3Fmod%3Dfox_australian&fpid=2,7,121,122,201,401,641,1009
Malaysia Report Shows Confusion as Plane Vanished
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—After Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -2.17% Flight 370 veered off its course, civilian air-traffic controllers spent precious predawn hours in befuddled exchanges with counterparts in nearby countries in an effort to locate the jet, according to documents released by investigators Thursday.
A series of missteps began less than an hour after the plane disappeared around 1:20 a.m. on March 8.
Through that first stretch, the carrier's operation center continued to advise controllers that the plane was in "normal condition," remained in contact with ground facilities and was flying somewhere in Cambodian airspace—an area that was never on its flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Even after the airline learned the plane wasn't over Cambodia, hours went by before an air-traffic supervisor sounded an alarm, around 5:30 a.m., for the missing plane.
A full-blown search didn't begin until about 10:30 a.m.—more than nine hours after the plane stopped communicating and vanished from civilian radar—when Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein was informed that military radar had tracked the plane turning west toward the Indian Ocean.
Before the search began, according to the chronology, Malaysian and Vietnamese traffic controllers had more than a dozen separate discussions about the location of the plane, without any resolution or commencement of a search. According to international safety guidelines and traffic-control procedures in many countries, a lapse in radio contact lasting more than half an hour typically prompts some type of emergency response.
The documents, some of which were prepared more than three weeks earlier, were released on the orders of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in an attempt to bring greater transparency to the search for the missing plane.
The documents lend support to the suspicion that someone intentionally diverted the plane as it crossed from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace, but offer no new information on what occurred in the cockpit as the plane veered sharply off its flight plan.
They included two maps of the route the plane is believed to have taken, indicating that it flew over the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Indonesia, however, has maintained that its radar didn't detect the plane in its airspace. Agus Barnas, spokesman for Indonesia Coordinating Ministry for Legal, Political, and Security Affairs, said Thursday that two military radar stations in northern Sumatra operate 24 hours a day and would have detected the plane. "It's impossible that we didn't know if the plane crossed the area," the spokesman said.
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was ‘shot down in military training exercise’ claims first book released about lost jet
The missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was shot down during a joint Thai-US military training exercise and then the subject of an elaborate international cover-up – according to a book released about the lost plane that has caused anger among the relatives of those on board.
Tomorrow, just 71 days after the Boeing 777 vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Flight MH370: The Mystery will go on sale in Australia, the Sun-Herald reported.
It has been written by the Anglo-American journalist and author Nigel Cawthorne, who describes his London-based home as a “book-writing factory” and is most famous for his Sex Lives series of “salacious tales” about the rich and famous.
Cawthorne introduces his book by claiming that the families of MH370’s passengers will “almost certainly” never be sure what happened to their loved ones.
But he goes on to support one theory, based on the eye-witness testimony of New Zealand oil rig worker Mike McKay, that the plane was shot down shortly after it stopped communicating with air traffic controllers.
At the time there was a series of war games taking place in the South China Sea involving Thailand, the US and personnel from China, Japan, Indonesia and others, and Cawthorne has linked this to Mr McKay’s claims to have seen a burning plane going down in the Gulf of Thailand.
“The drill was to involve mock warfare on land, in water and in the air, and would include live-fire exercises,'' Cawthorne said.
“Say a participant accidentally shot down Flight MH370. Such things do happen. No one wants another Lockerbie [Pan Am flight 103 by terrorists in 1988 allegedly in retaliation for a US Navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier], so those involved would have every reason to keep quiet about it.”
Cawthorne then suggests that “another black box” could have been dropped off the coast of Australia to divert the efforts of search teams. “After all, no wreckage has been found in the south Indian Ocean, which in itself is suspicious,” he wrote.
Irene Burrows, whose son and daughter-in-law were passengers on board MH370 when it disappeared, told the Sun-Herald of her anger at the book’s release.
“Nobody knows what happened so why would anyone want to put out a book at this stage?” she said.
“There's absolutely no answers. It's devastating for the families. It's 10 weeks tomorrow and there's nothing.”
The release of Cawthorne’s book came as Rupesh Paul promoted a film to be made about the missing plane, entitled The Vanishing Act, at the Cannes Film Festival.
Though associate director Sritama Dutta said the film had “no similarities” to MH370 because the “true facts keep changing every day”, a trailer posted to YouTube yesterday and promotional posters suggest it reveals “the untold story” of the Malaysia Airlines flight.
Paul told Variety he plans to release the film worldwide in September. In March, an Australian film called Deep Water was shelved because it contained “uncomfortable similarities” to the disappearance of MH370.
Former Prime Minister Of Malaysia Accuses CIA Of Covering Up MH-370 Disappearance
It has been over two months since Malaysian flight MH-370 disappeared and still not a single credible trace of its final resting place has been found.
In the ongoing din over the confusion surrounding the recovery effort which has led nowhere, even the current Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak recently described the current rescue effort driven by satellite data of the suggested "location" of purported MH370 debris in the Indian Ocean as 'bizarre' and 'hard to believe'. Further, he told CNN when discussing the satellite data which is the basis for the current search in the Indian Ocean that 'To be honest, I found it hard to believe.... It's a bizarre scenario which none of us could have contemplated so that's why when I met the team...of foremost experts in aviation industry I asked them again and again "are you sure?"
In short: "nobody knows." Or so the conventional wisdom goes.
One person, however, who thinks someone may know more than they are letting on is none other than the man who was the Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, Mahathir Mohamad, and who in a blog post earlier today has some rather provocative questions and thoughts.
In his article, titled appropriately "What goes up must come down", the former PM argues that flight did not crash and its current whereabouts may be know to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Boeing aircraft company: "It is a waste of time and money to look for debris or oil slick or to listen for “pings” from the black box. This is most likely not an ordinary crash after fuel was exhausted. The plane is somewhere, maybe without MAS markings."
But far more provocatively, and daring to utter a three letter acronym few others do, Mahathir said the plane could have been switched onto autopilot remotely by the CIA if it had been hijacked, citing a reference which claims that "The ‘uninterruptible’ autopilot would be activated – either by pilot, by on board sensors, or even remotely by radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, if terrorists attempt to gain control of the flight deck."
Mahatir goes back to day one, when the first disclosure surrounding the fateful flight were made, and when it was clear that the pilot, for whatever reason, purposefully shut down the communication system. "The system must have been disabled or else the ground station could have called the plane."
So putting two and two together, the former PM, who believes that "it is not fair that MAS and Malaysia should take the blame" concludes that "someone is hiding something."
His hope:
For some reason the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA. I hope my readers will read this.
To help the former premier reach as many readers as possible (and perhaps before his blog has an unfortunate nailgun incident), we repost his letter in its entirety.
From Chedet.cc: "Boeing technology - what goes up must come down"
1. What goes up must come down. Airplanes can go up and stay up for long periods of time. But even they must come down eventually. They can land safely or they may crash. But airplanes don’t just disappear. Certainly not these days with all the powerful communication systems, radio and satellite tracking and filmless cameras which operate almost indefinitely and possess huge storage capacities.
2. I wrote about the disabling of MH370’s communication system as well as the signals for GPS. The system must have been disabled or else the ground station could have called the plane. The GPS too must have been disabled or else the flight of MH370 would have been tracked by satellites which normally provide data on all commercial flights, inclusive of data on location, kind of aircraft, flight number, departure airport and destination. But the data seems unavailable. The plane just disappeared seemingly from all screens.
3. MH370 is a Boeing 777 aircraft. It was built and equipped by Boeing. All the communications and GPS equipment must have been installed by Boeing. If they failed or have been disabled Boeing must know how it can be done. Surely Boeing would ensure that they cannot be easily disabled as they are vital to the safety and operation of the plane.
4. A search on the Internet reveals that Boeing in 2006 received a US patent for a system that, once activated, removes all control from pilots to automatically return a commercial airliner to a pre-determined landing location.
5. The Flightglobal.com article by John Croft, datelined Washington DC (1st December, 2006) further mentioned “The ‘uninterruptible’ autopilot would be activated – either by pilot, by on board sensors, or even remotely by radio or satellite links by government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, if terrorists attempt to gain control of the flight deck”.
6. Clearly Boeing and certain agencies have the capacity to take over “uninterruptible control” of commercial airliners of which MH370 B777 is one.
7. Can it not be that the pilot of MH370 lost control of their aircraft after someone directly or remotely activated the equipment for seizure of control of the aircraft.
8. It is a waste of time and money to look for debris or oil slick or to listen for “pings” from the black box. This is most likely not an ordinary crash after fuel was exhausted. The plane is somewhere, maybe without MAS markings.
9. Boeing should explain about this so-called anti-terrorism auto-land system. I cannot imagine the pilots made a soft-landing in rough seas and then quietly drown with the aircraft.
10. Someone is hiding something. It is not fair that MAS and Malaysia should take the blame.
11. For some reason the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA. I hope my readers will read this.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5b23b0ea-e6f6-11e3-88be-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fhome_asia%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct&siteedition=intl#axzz335reaaXN
Search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 thrown into fresh confusion
May 29, 2014 7:18 am
SYDNEY – The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner suffered a further setback on Thursday after Australian officials said wreckage from the aircraft was not on the seafloor in the area they had identified.
The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the aeroplane’s black box recorders were heard near where analysis of satellite data put its last location, about 1,600km off the northwest coast of Australia.
“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has advised that the search in the vicinity of the acoustic detections can now be considered complete and, in its professional judgment, the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370,” the agency in charge of the search said in a statement.
The discovery of the pings on April 5 and 8 was hailed as a significant breakthrough, with Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott expressing confidence that searchers knew where the aeroplane wreckage was within a few kilometres.
However, a thorough scan of the 850 sq km area around the pings with an unmanned submarine failed to find any sign of wreckage. No debris linked to the plane has been picked up despite the most extensive and expensive search effort in aviation history.
Earlier on Thursday, CNN quoted Michael Dean, the US Navy’s deputy director of ocean engineering, as saying authorities now almost universally believe the pings did not come from the missing aircraft's onboard data or cockpit voice recorders.
“Our best theory at this point is that [the pings were] likely some sound produced by the ship . . . or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator,” Mr Dean told CNN.
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight: Oil rig worker Mike McKay loses job after MH370 'fire in the sky' report
Date
June 9, 2014 - 6:40AM
Steve Lillebuen
Reports from an oil rig worker who saw a fire in the sky on the night Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared are being taken seriously, police sources have confirmed.
But New Zealander Mike McKay, 55, has lost his job in the ‘‘circus’’ that developed after his report to authorities was leaked.
Mr McKay had been working on the Songa Mercur oil rig in the South China Sea when he saw an ‘‘orange light’’ on an especially clear night.
The object was still in one piece and close to where MH370 first dropped off radar between Malaysia and Vietnam on March 8 with 239 people on board.
He emailed his employer and Vietnamese authorities about his sighting, but his statement was leaked, which included his full name, email, passport number, and full details of the company operating the rig.
In the ensuing media storm, Mr McKay said the Japanese-based petroleum company, Idemitsu, was flooded with emails and he was taken off the rig.
He is now unemployed and disappointed his efforts at reporting potentially vital information turned into such a circus.
‘‘I was only trying to privately help,’’ he told Fairfax Media during a series of interviews.
‘‘If it was the aeroplane I saw, then it must have been an external fire. How far would an aeroplane stay in the air after such a fire?’’
Mr McKay has worked in oil and gas exploration for more than 30 years, mostly in Southeast Asia, but returned to his native New Zealand while waiting for more work.
His initial statement described what he believed to be an aircraft on fire at a high altitude. The fire burned itself out in about 10 to 15 seconds and he gave an exact location based on his position on the oil rig platform.
‘‘There was no lateral movement, so it was either coming toward our location, stationary (falling) or going away from our location,’’ he wrote.
His sighting, however, appeared to be quickly discounted as one of the many hoaxes and false leads which have hampered the three-month international search effort.
Mr McKay’s reluctance to go public, and his complete lack of an internet presence, also raised doubts about the credibility of the report, which began on social media and gained traction largely through MH370 conspiracy theory websites.
But Fairfax Media tracked down the oil industry worker and confirmed with two police sources that he is being treated as a truthful and credible witness.
He was interviewed at length about his sighting at a police station near Auckland and his statement has since been forwarded to Malaysian authorities.
‘‘What he’s told you is effectively what he’s told us,’’ said a senior investigator involved in the case.
Mr McKay’s witness statement comes after a British sailor also reported seeing a burning object in the sky.
Katherine Tee, 41, was sailing from India to Thailand in early March when she spotted a plane surrounded by bright orange lights with a tail of black smoke.
The two sightings, however, are hundreds of kilometres apart.
Investigators have also moved on from searching the South China Sea and still believe MH370 went down somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean.
While several underwater acoustic signals or ‘‘pings’’ have been ruled out as coming from the aircraft’s black boxes, satellite data still places it somewhere on a long arc in the large, southern search area.
Mr McKay said he hopes the plane is found in the Indian Ocean but he can’t explain how his sighting may fit in with what is known so far.
‘‘There are unanswered questions every step of the way,’’ he said.
‘‘I have no answers.’’
MH370 captain plotted route to southern Indian Ocean on home simulator
Detectives investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 three months ago discover new evidence which has renewed suspicions about its pilot
Suspicion of Captain Zaharie emerged within a week of MH370's disappearance as the Chinese government intensified pressure on Malaysia to explain the mystery and find the missing plane
Dean Nelson By Dean Nelson, New Delhi11:56AM BST 22 Jun 2014
The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane which disappeared in March with 239 people on board had plotted a flight path to a remote island far into the southern Indian Ocean where the search is now focused, investigators have discovered.
The route, which was deleted before MH370 disappeared on March 8, was made on a home flight simulator machine used for practice by its captain, Zaharie Shah. Its discovery has intensified suspicion that he deliberately hijacked his own plane and diverted it from its approved flight path to Beijing.
More than three months have now passed since the flight disappeared in what has become one of the great mysteries of modern aviation. And despite a lack of any hard evidence, suspicion of Capt Zaharie's involvement has grown as investigators have gradually eliminated other potential suspects and causes of its disappearance.
Detectives and investigators, including experts from Britain's Air Incident Branch, have so far found no evidence of a technical fault or malfunction which could explain its disappearance. Inquiries into the backgrounds of the flight's passengers and crew have similarly failed to yield any evidence of, or motive for, anyone hijacking the plane or sabotaging it.
But suspicion of Capt Zaharie emerged within a week of MH370's disappearance as the Chinese government intensified pressure on Malaysia to explain the mystery and find the missing plane. More than 150 of its 227 passengers were Chinese nationals.
Detectives raided Capt Zaharie's home in Kuala Lumpur and took away his flight simulator as part of their investigation as tracking information from the British Inmarsat satellite company indicated the flight had not plunged into the South China Sea off Malaysia's east cost close to Vietnam as feared but had doubled back across the Malay Peninsula, turned left and headed towards the southern Indian Ocean.
Its movement indicated it had been deliberately diverted but there is no evidence yet to conclude who was responsible.
On Friday, shortly before new details of Capt Zaharie's deleted simulator flight path emerged, Malaysia's acting transport minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, said his search team would soon begin looking in a new area in the southern Indian Ocean corridor suggested by a new analysis.
"We have to continue with the lead because the best lead we have is based on the handshake on the Inmarsat [satellite data] and still in the southern corridor", he said.
Sources close to the investigation confirmed to The Telegraph on Sunday that a deleted flight path had been recovered from Capt Zaharie's simulator which had been used to practice landing an aircraft on a small runway on an unnamed island in the far southern Indian Ocean.
The discovery leaves Capt Zaharie as the prime suspect in a crime which cannot yet be proven to have been committed – and Malaysian police have been careful in their public comments to stress that all leads are still being investigated and no conclusions have been reached.
At a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on March 16, however, Malaysia's chief of police Khalid Abu Bakar said he believed the plane had been diverted by hijackers, saboteurs or someone with a personal vendetta or psychological problem. Friends and relatives of Capt Zaharie denied he had any motive for hijacking his own plane and described him as a warm and helpful man who was committed to social work.
He had campaigned for the mainstream People's Justice Party of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and did not support Islamic extremists, party worker Sivarasa Rasiah told The Telegraph shortly after the plane disappeared.
"He comes across as a really likeable guy, a warm guy. There is absolutely no way he is doing this of his own volition," he said.
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